It’s my favorite. Of course, I never can leave well enough alone and add cardamon and dried cranberries (that have been soaked in a bit of o.j. and then nuke it for a minute). I’ll pass on the brown rice and stay with basmati or jasmine.
]]>By: Earlhttp://www.bookwormroom.com/2011/01/26/post-sotu-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-113856
Fri, 28 Jan 2011 05:43:24 +0000http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=15542#comment-113856@Sadie: I’ve always loved to cook (Thanks, Mom!) but never had time until I retired. Now having fun. I don’t like “fussy” stuff – enjoying my Crock-Pot and made a wonderful rice pudding today – will have to tweak it for brown rice, and my love for custard, but it’s a great start!

Anyhow, here’s the link for the Beef Wellington, which I HIGHLY recommend:

americasheartland.org/recipes_tips/beef_wellington

You’ll need to add “.htm” on the end, and “http://www.” on the front – if I type it in, the preview shows a whole bunch of trash in my comment, so I left the prefix and suffix off.
It occurs to me that it would have been smart to include the link in my post along with the photographs – I’ll have to go back and edit.

I made my own Mushroom pate, as it’s not to be found in Bend — no pate of any kind, actually. One of the guys (Whole Foods) told me it was a holiday thing…. There are lots of recipes on the Web – I made something rather simple by extracting from a number:

Directions
In wide frying pan, sauté garlic and mushrooms in 1/4 cup butter over high heat until liquid evaporates.
Add salt, thyme, pepper and sherry. Lower heat, simmer until mushrooms are dry.
Puree mushroom mixture in blender or food processor.
Blend in the 2 tablespoons butter.
Turn into serving dish. Cover and chill for at least 30 minutes to blend flavors.
Garnish with chopped green onions before serving.
]]>By: SADIEhttp://www.bookwormroom.com/2011/01/26/post-sotu-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-113854
Fri, 28 Jan 2011 05:11:09 +0000http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=15542#comment-113854Earl … there just isn’t enough money for most of us to listen. Reading it was grueling.

BTW…I like your blog. Why, you ask? I love to cook and have an opinion about most things as well. I usually make too much and since I live alone, my neighbors are the beneficiaries of never learning to cook for fewer than four and I never mind eating the same meal two days in a row ;
]]>By: Earlhttp://www.bookwormroom.com/2011/01/26/post-sotu-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-113851
Fri, 28 Jan 2011 04:51:16 +0000http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=15542#comment-113851I’m late….but I didn’t listen to the speech either (cannot force myself to listen to the man, and no one is paying me to do so).

What impressed me about the “Sputnik moment” is that under the Obama Administration, NASA’s budget has been slashed to the point that nothing comparable can be done over there.

I realize that he isn’t talking about loosing NASA to do big things, but the cognitive dissonance is too great to ignore.

If we don’t continue the “change” of 2010 when 2012 gets here, our country is well and truly screwed!
]]>By: bizcorhttp://www.bookwormroom.com/2011/01/26/post-sotu-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-113751
Thu, 27 Jan 2011 04:09:29 +0000http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=15542#comment-113751So Book you are feeling a bit uninspired. It happens. Not such a surprise hey we, the tea party and conservative movement have worked very hard to turn the tide. We have gotten control of the House which means we hold the checkbook so it its ok to take a brief respite. Getting in control of the checkbook allows us to take repose but it does not allow us to rest on our laurels. The Republicans are not above reproach. They need to be held accountable. We need to watch them like a hawk. So languish in it for a bit because the checkbook is on hold but remember we have only just begun. We must continue teach those who think the government should supply us with everything are incorrect.

Did I wish you a Happy New Year? If not I do now. Same to all the contributors
Biz

]]>By: Oldflyerhttp://www.bookwormroom.com/2011/01/26/post-sotu-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-113741
Thu, 27 Jan 2011 01:41:47 +0000http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=15542#comment-113741I never considered his analogy to mean anything other than our response to Sputnik. I posted somewhere on that. The Soviets put a grapefruit sized satellite in orbit at a time when our rocket program was sputtering; so we (JFK) threw trillions of $$ into the moon boondoggle.

The lesson of the Sputnik moment is very real, but it is not what Obama wants to teach. The lesson is that government will over react, and overspend in response to every real or imagined problem.

All JFK needed to do was reassure the country that our space program was designed to serve our national needs; that the problems with the Vanguard rocket system would be addressed, and that we would proceed in a orderly and reasoned manner to reach our goals.

But, “we will put a man on the moon in this decade” really was a lot more grandiose and politically satisfying. Also a lot more expensive. Not to mention, meaningless. Well, we do have some moon rocks, and some impressive video. And the country was entertained for awhile. At the very same time that Neil Armstrong spoke his stirring words, young men were dying in, and over, Viet Nam because of shortages of war supplies and lack of political will.
Pardon my cynicism.
]]>By: Michael Adamshttp://www.bookwormroom.com/2011/01/26/post-sotu-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-113731
Wed, 26 Jan 2011 23:57:39 +0000http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=15542#comment-113731Yep, to anyone over fifty nine, a “Sputnik moment” is nothing to seek.
]]>By: Wolf Howlinghttp://www.bookwormroom.com/2011/01/26/post-sotu-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-113726
Wed, 26 Jan 2011 20:49:34 +0000http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=15542#comment-113726Well, you certainly didn’t miss anything last night. Obama didn’t even make a good head fake to the center, promising as he did to keep spending us into oblivion. He still sees the government as the answer to all of our problems, whether real, imagined or purposely manufatured. He did trot out what will be the new meme to every attempt to reign in the left’s world record spending binge – think of the poor and the children. It is a travesty. The poor need decent jobs and low food, fuel and housing costs. Virtually every policy Obama is pushing is going to hit the poor the hardest. Obama may give them a dollar in handouts, but when that dollar won’t buy a gallon of gas or a loaf of bread, the poor are not exactly better off.

As to Sputnik . . . yeah, poor imagery indeed. Leave it to Obama to embrace an old Soviet icon to motivate Amerika to follow his lead down the path to new innovations in socialism.

]]>By: Mike Devxhttp://www.bookwormroom.com/2011/01/26/post-sotu-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-113724
Wed, 26 Jan 2011 20:32:06 +0000http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=15542#comment-113724By your words you are revealed. This is not the first time Obama has called for a “Sputnik Moment”. Apparently those words resonate with HIM. I think you are spot on in your assessment, Book.

Look at it this way. If you go on and on about “whoremongers” and “drowing in the Lake Of Fire for Eternity”, then what resonates with you is fundamentalist Christianity. And that’s fine. But to claim you’re not identifying with it is ridiculous.

Obama doesn’t find a phrase that celebrates American Exceptionalism because there’s nothing exceptional about America to him. He’d rather dwell on the Sputnik Moment.

It’s what resonates with him. Big Government, the bigger the better. The more authoritarian, the better. Obama, the Man Who Would Be King.

Mama Obama on Christmas morning: “Bammie, what’s wrong?”
“You know I wanted more Bureaucracy for Christmas. You only got me these TOYS.”
“But honey… you’ve already filled three rooms of our house with bureaucrats and reams of papers with all kinds of regulations and proposals for more government bureaucracies. We just don’t have any more space for more Bureaucracies.”
“I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! You don’t love me anymore!”
“Oh, honey, I Hope you Change. Your mind, that is.”

]]>By: SADIEhttp://www.bookwormroom.com/2011/01/26/post-sotu-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-113723
Wed, 26 Jan 2011 20:30:23 +0000http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=15542#comment-113723Finally, NPR has 4,000 responses to the SOTU. They have fed them to a word cloud generator – as if his words aren’t nebulous enough. Oh, do delight in the ‘art’ of reporting – we are funding it!